Development of improved therapy for adult leukemia still serves as the primary objective of this research. Our aim is to be able to get our leukemia patients to stay in remission for longer periods of time. Important research has been developed and the individual drugs have been very successful in the treatment of adult leukemia. Perhaps even more important than the identification of individual drugs has been the development of important principles of treatment. In the adult forms of leukemia, we have a spectrum in degrees of malignancy which are extraordinarily broad. These range from the highly undifferentiated malignancies which resemble stem cell tumors such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia all the way to the chronic leukemia diseases such as chronic granulocytic leukemia where hypertrophy of what appears to be completely normal differentiation is the early manifestation of malignancy. Particularly in the case of the myeloid leukemias there is now an opportunity to investigate malignancy occurring throughout all phases of the development of the cells that differentiate from the organ. Techniques for prolongation of remission, once achieved, include the effectiveness of immunological adjuvant therapy. The present grant supports the work of the Chairman of the Adult Leukemia Committee of the Southwest Oncology Group and draws upon the expertise within the Department of Developmental Therapeutics to develop new research leads, conduct pilot studies and participate in the groupwide studies of the Southwest Oncology Group.